Divine Luck: SSS-Rank Battle Maid Harem-Chapter 434: Visitor Two

Zach got another visitor the next day. It was someone he had neither hoped nor expected would arrive, but it was someone he liked seeing anyway. It was Derot.

Zach naturally invited him inside and offered him something to eat and drink. Derot wasn’t interested in Zach’s refreshments. He was there on business.

"Zach," he said with a heavy voice. Zach had already expected something heavy based on Derot’s expression and gaunt look, but the way he said his name all but confirmed that he came bearing bad news.

"Yeah?"

"Word on the street is that you are a traitor."

"I’m not, but…"

"It’s not good for business. There are rumors that all the recipes and alchemical theories that Alzara has provided are from the barbarians to the East. I’ve done my best to quell them, but it’s not working. It’s like trying to put out a wildfire with spit. I’m working uphill here," Derot explained the situation outside with a hanging head as he beat around the bush, delaying the inevitable.

Zach tried to look at Derot, but Derot wouldn’t meet Zach’s gaze.

Zach sighed.

"You did what you had to. Leave." Derot’s eyes widened for a moment before he nodded and stood up. He left without meeting Zach’s eyes once since he arrived.

How could he? He had kicked Zach out of the guild. The other shareholders were protesting. The Imperial Palace was scrutinizing them and freezing their cooperation. The market treated their products like the plague.

All because Zach’s family was accused of treason. The same ones who hadn’t held back as soon as they heard Zach was operating this guild without his family’s help now couldn’t help but condemn Zach for the crimes his family had committed.

Aside from Zach, Derot was the one with the most influence in the Guild. In some ways, he even had greater influence since he was the one running it while Zach had only shown his face once after the launch ceremony. If he didn’t agree, no one could force out Zach.

But stubbornly clinging to a guild under Zach’s rule would lead to the Guild’s death. It wouldn’t even take long before a guild owned by someone labeled a traitor to the Empire became nothing more than a faint memory.

For the sake of the guild, Derot had to get rid of Zach.

It took a little finesse for it to be legal and legit, but no one opposed him as he usurped Zach as the head of the guild and threw him aside. It was one of the easiest things he had done with the guild.

Zach lay down on his bed.

It suddenly felt like the world had turned against him. He didn’t even have his maids to comfort him.

He knew Violina and the others hadn’t turned on him or anything. But he had been in this cell for so long without any of them coming to visit. They probably weren’t allowed, but he felt like Violina should have been able to do something if she leveraged her family’s authority. Since she hadn’t…Someone was probably stopping her.

It could be her father or maybe even her great-grandfather Sio. If they were stopping her from using their family’s authority to visit him, they probably had a reason.

The Systine Ducal Family weren’t so scared they would be intimidated by the Palace into not visiting him. They also wouldn’t care about rumors that they were talking to a suspected traitor.

However, what if it wasn’t a ’suspected’ traitor?

’I guess there’s no denying it…’ Zach sighed. In the eyes of others, he was probably already marked as a traitor. That meant his family had probably done what they were accused of.

The only question was why.

Zach couldn’t answer it no matter how much he thought about it. He wanted out.

However, it didn’t look like that was happening anytime soon. The only thing that was happening was a bunch of snobby investigators coming to question him about his actions and whereabouts the last years and whether he was involved in his family’s conspiracy.

Zach just told them that it wasn’t a secret what he had been up to and if they wanted to know, they could just ask anyone. He had never hidden his actions or whereabouts from anyone. If anything, he had made it pretty obvious where he was and what he did.

That irked the investigators and interrogators to no end, which pleased Zach. If he wasn’t going to be let out anytime soon, the least he could do was torment the ones who came to visit.

Several weeks passed like that with nothing changing except the faces of the interrogators, all trying to glean something new from Zach or break him with equally boring interrogation methods.

However, since they didn’t even have a glimmer of evidence that he was involved and only evidence that he wasn’t a traitor, they couldn’t use physical violence. He was, after all, a descendant of one of the founding families. Even if the current generations of the Evandiels had turned traitor, the founding members hadn’t. They still deserved respect.

There also weren’t many who were confident it was a good idea to use force.

Zach wasn’t compliant, but he wasn’t fighting back. If he and his familiars chose to cause trouble, keeping them contained would be a lot more difficult and costly.

The plan was to aggravate and provoke Zach and make him trip up, unintentionally revealing his connections to the traitors. It wasn’t going very well. They did not have anything tying Zach to the treason other than his blood relations with the rest of his family. He could not be put on trial like this. If he was convicted, it would be wrongfully.

The Empress Dowager opposed it. The Emperor wasn’t saying much about it. The court minsters and nobles wanted to make an example of him or use him to drag out the rest of his family.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

In the end, the court got what they wanted. Zach was going to be used to capture the Evandiels and bring them to justice.